Matt's August Sermon

Matt spoke again at church a few weeks ago...if this all works properly you should be able to listen below!

Miraculous Healing

I’ve thought about healing a lot over the past few years.  I have no understanding of it really except that the disciples healed as they went and I know there are miracles today.  I’ve been in healing meetings, have seen numerous people prayed for and know of people healed, but as far as my own ability goes (or rather, any ability the Holy Spirit has given me) I am at a bit of a loss.

A couple of weeks ago I was taking a walk down by the beach and saw a woman who was obviously disfigured from birth.  She was too short and looked awkward in her stance.  I walked a bit further down the beach and sat down in the sand with my daughter.  As we sat there I looked back up the beach and saw this woman walking with crutches to get into the water and it just about broke my heart.  It was an incredible day and there were people running and playing everywhere…and she slowly made her way to the water among this.  I knew she had never known what that was like… but being a grown woman I figured she had probably already dealt with those feelings of missing out.

I asked God, “Would you heal her?”  …hypothetically meaning - if I went and prayed for her healing would she be miraculously healed.  Then I realized God would now ask me to go pray for her.  But I’m a chicken and I knew God knew it.  I told him if he wanted me to go pray for her he was going to have to give me a big push.  I knew God ‘could’ heal her, but I just didn’t know if he would.  He didn’t give me a push, and then I begged God not to let her miss out of being healed simply because I wasn’t brave enough to be the one to pray for her. 

That experience has stuck with me and so I was praying about it the other night, trying to figure out why that question ‘would you heal her’ had felt so intense, because God had not said ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  Then he revealed the answer he had given me and I understood why it was so heavy at the time.  His answer had been, “you won’t know unless you go and pray for her”…

Reflection

I was thinking back to a time just after Ada was born (August 2010) when life was in such turmoil.  We had been seeking direction from God for the past 2 years, and thought we had found it.  The opportunity had arisen (or so we thought) to be part of a church on one of the islands off the top of Australia.  After seeking God for so long and having opportunities come up that we knew where not the right doors to walk through we were relieved to finally know what we were going to be doing.  It felt so right, and even though we would have been living out of a camper (this at a time when I was desperate to make a home for my new daughter), we couldn’t deny that everything in us pulled in that direction.  Then the door closed and we were like a couple of stunned mullets.  (If you are finding yourself in a wilderness a great book to read is Elijah and the Secret of His Power by F. B. Meyer, it gave both Matt and I so much encouragement – even in just the first few chapters)

Because we had spent 2 years seeking, before that opportunity arose we were fine about continuing on the ‘seeking’ road.  We knew it well.  But when we stepped off that path into a clearing only to find that it wasn’t, it was as though we had lost the path and were now lost in the woods.  Matt got a job and we rented a house and we felt so out of sorts.  Filled with confusion we found ourselves in a very bleak time. 

The reason for writing this is not to make everyone feel depressed, but more to the point – here I sit more than 6 months later and I am so relieved at God’s wisdom and patience.  I can now look back and be grateful for God’s gentle hand in all of that.  That lost opportunity gave me the ability to see that I was willing to live on a dirt floor as long as I was in God’s will – because when you are in God’s will you can do anything.  God used that missed opportunity to make very clear to us our motivation and desire to serve God, but in his infinite wisdom he held us back because he knew there was still work to be done on us.  God has taken me closer and closer to him over these last months.  I can now see that I sit before the King of Kings when we talk, but more importantly I sit before my Father.

We continue to seek God, but there is so much more peace, contentment and joy.  We are eager to see what God has laid out before us, but are more able to take a deep breath and wait…